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Friday, November 28, 2008

Oil Price Tank Threatens Green Energy


One of the biggest factors for many industries and people to go with green energy was the high cost of oil. They went solar, they went with wind power, hydro, bio-fuels, hydrogen fleets, electric cars, and the green energy movement was born again. What happens now to that green energy drive when oil is once more affordable? Should it be abandoned or pursued more feverishly?

In my little corner of the world it was great to see one small Catholic high school put up a wind turbine on its campus from their pristine location on a high hill in our city. Seeing that turbine whip around and feed the school all of its electric energy needs is just amazing to behold. I would love to see the seven hills of Worcester, MA look like the Gray Goose about to take off. That would be a Howard Hughes reference to an aircraft that he proposed and the government prosecuted him over that it could never fly. It did fly and so will the green energy mentality.

America has been burned over the last few years with the speculation on oil and we frankly are late on getting on the green energy bandwagon. We never learned from the oil embargo of the 1970’s but we sure as hell will never forget the oil desecration of our financial system once the oil bubble burst.

Over at the Guardian and from Chris Goodall they have this amazing piece on "The Ten Big Energy Myths". I loved it! This is a must read article and you might find yourself amazed at the myths and what the truth actually is…

Myth 1: solar power is too expensive to be of much use
Myth 2: wind power is too unreliable
Myth 3: marine energy is a dead-end
Myth 4: nuclear power is cheaper than other low-carbon sources of electricity
Myth 5: electric cars are slow and ugly
Myth 6: biofuels are always destructive to the environment
Myth 7: climate change means we need more organic agriculture
Myth 8: zero carbon homes are the best way of dealing with greenhouse gas emissions from buildings
Myth 9: the most efficient power stations are big
Myth 10: all proposed solutions to climate change need to be hi-tech

Guardian.co.uk

I’m hoping that we in America will continue the fight for energy independence. We can not prosper as a people when any foreign entity controls our power needs. If we can not supply our nation with the energy we need to continue the fight that is right for human rights then we are dead in the water. If we as a people espouse to be the conscience of the world then we had better be able to feed the energy needs of that mind set. Otherwise, we need to start kissing the butt’s of some of the same folks that reaped the largest financial gains in history from the American people.

Keep up the fight for clean energy and chuck the bird at the people that told us we can not survive as a nation without the product they have to sell us. Thus dragging us collectively as a people into their political wars that have not made any sense for centuries.

Papamoka

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Saturday, April 05, 2008

American Ingenuity on Oil’s Replacement


I’ve said it before on many posts on this site. The end of the strangle hold on America’s energy needs is nearing the end of the beginning. All of those back yard inventors of a better mouse trap when it comes to our fuel needs are coming out of the woodwork and the ones serious enough to believe in it will be successful.

One of the things I find interesting is that many of these backyard chemist, biologist, and guys that know how to work a mean wrench have on thing in common, not one of them thinks they will replace the Exxon’s of this world but they sure as hell will put a dent in their billion dollar profits year by year. And as these combined technologies all grow over time then the likes of Exxon will be the mega giant corporations that dared to think it was irreplaceable. Read more on this great article from Popular Science and Amanda Schaffer in the latest issue…

I’m watching this image on a computer screen at Amyris Biotechnologies in Emeryville, California, where one of the founders, biologist Jack Newman, is giving me a tour. The genetically manipulated E. coli before me are highly crafted units of industrial production, which Amyris is using to turn sugar into novel versions of gasoline, jet fuel and diesel—in other words, the fuels on which the world already runs. Amyris is one of a handful of young biofuel companies putting a brilliant and weird twist on the future of green. It’s betting that, with the help of bacteria, the long-term answer to our gasoline woes will actually be . . . gasoline.

Because as it stands, the main alternative to petroleum, ethanol (a type of alcohol), is fraught with problems. It can’t be pumped through current infrastructure because it tends to corrode pipelines. And according to University of Minnesota economist Jason Hill, even if all the corn grown in the U.S. were converted to ethanol, it would replace only some 12 percent of the 146 billion gallons of gasoline we use every year. Cellulosic ethanol—fuel produced from the cellulosic matter contained in plant stalks and stems rather than from seeds—would solve that problem, but the technology to produce it on a large scale is still a way off. Plus, ethanol simply isn’t as energy dense as petroleum-based fuels.
- Popular Science

One of the things I find very warming to the spirit is that this research isn’t coming from the United States Government or sponsored by XYZ oil company. It’s coming from American’s with an attitude, American’s with a spirit and sense of what is right and what is wrong. It’s coming from a displaced sense of the American way of life. For the last eight years we as a people have been jerked around by circumstances beyond our control and if you know anything about Americans, we hate being told that the price of our greatest energy resource is beyond our control. That’s a tough pill to swallow and we American’s tend to hate having anything shoved down our throats. Even when it comes from within our own nation with the people we allow a free market to dictate prices.

This is an Energy Revolution and it is starting in garages, chemistry labs, brain storming sessions, and with individuals sick and tired of having the money they earned spent on fuels to run our vehicles or buying a gallon of milk for their families. That is an argument that will never be won when it comes to the hundreds of thousands of brilliant minds working today all across America to pretty much chuck the Middle East and all OPEC nations the bird.

This countries energy needs will pretty much be self reliant in twenty to thirty years. It’s not going to be easy and it isn’t something that can happen overnight or from any one technology. It will happen with one advancement at a time. Think of it as a slow strangling end to imported oil much like the horse and buggy day.

One last quote from the same Popular Science piece…

Before I leave, though, he shows me a painting he keeps in his office. It’s of a little boy leaping from one cliff to another across a chasm. The boy’s arms are stretched out. His head juts forward. “He isn’t even looking at the edge. He’s looking beyond the edge,” Reiling says. “He’s 100 percent committed to that jump. That’s what you’ve got to do when you’re going after something.”

You have my best wishes on success Amyris!

Papamoka

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